Your Life or Mine

by Vicki Bradley

  ‘This is a set-up,’ Loxton said. ‘If Kowalski was the killer, his DNA wouldn’t be on the victims. Look at all this kit.’

  Lena knelt down next to the car and taped her mobile to the underside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘I doubt Kowalski will come back to this car, but just in case. That phone’s GPS is on, so if this car moves, we can track it. I have a “find my phone” tracker on it and I can use your mobile to follow it.’

  ‘Aren’t we staying with the car until Forensics get here?’ She regarded Lena curiously. Obviously they did things differently in Poland.

  ‘There’s no one around and this car’s been here for a while by the look of it. We can search these warehouses in the time that pickup truck gets here. And if Kowalski does come back for the car, then we can follow him to where he’s operating from. Time is of the essence. You said so yourself. Come on, we need to try to find Jane.’

  Loxton nodded. Lena was right. Jane didn’t have much time. The police work could wait.

  Lena logged on to the ‘find my phone’ app using Loxton’s mobile and handed it back to her and they headed to the warehouses.

  When the security man had checked their warrant cards, he insisted on calling Walworth Police Station to confirm who they were. Loxton had tried to keep her patience throughout the call. She hoped Winter and Meyer were still too busy dealing with the consequences of Harding’s death to notice.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t be too careful.’ The security man studied them both, as if still not convinced that they were really police officers. ‘These warehouses are all operational. There’s no way there’s anyone using them to stash anything; someone would have noticed.’

  ‘We appreciate that.’ Loxton tried to keep the impatience out of her voice. ‘We just need to check and then we’ll be out of your way.’

  The security man nodded. ‘Well, I have to stay on the gate. There’s a delivery scheduled any time now. Here’s the keys; they’ve got numbers on that correspond with the warehouses. But I check them every night regular and there ain’t anything unusual in them. And if there were, Reggie would tell me.’ He patted his Rottweiler’s large head while it regarded Loxton with wild eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, obviously noticing Loxton’s wary expression, ‘he’s all right, aren’t you boy?’ The security man stroked Reggie affectionately.

  Loxton didn’t fancy testing the theory. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  They headed to the first warehouse in the gloomy winter morning. There was a large sliding garage-type door but there was also a normal door to the side of it for them to use. Lena fiddled with the stack of keys until she found the right one and they went inside.

  It took Loxton a moment to find the light switch and she was reminded of a large cave, just as the strobe lighting jerked to life and hummed above her head. There were rows and rows of shelves, some empty and some filled with boxes that went almost to the ceiling.

  ‘Perhaps we could have done with Reggie,’ Loxton said, taking in the size of the area.

  ‘Let’s start in the middle and split up; we’ll cover the ground quicker.’ Lena set off in one direction.

  ‘I’ll meet you back at this door once you’ve finished your half.’ Loxton headed down the first aisle, peering up at the shelves high above her. The only noise was from the hum of the lights, her own footfall and Lena’s footsteps getting further and further away.

  The warehouse sent a shiver through her and she drew her baton. It was cold and sterile in here, and it felt like she was the only person on the planet. Her footsteps echoed down the aisles and back at her, making her doubt for a second whether she really was alone.

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was a yellow forklift truck parked to the side of the aisles and a tower of navy pallets ready to use. She wondered what was inside all of the boxes, but the labels only contained long serial numbers and barcodes.

  She heard a strangled shout back from where she had come. She turned and sprinted towards the noise, her heartbeat racing. As she ran, she cracked open her baton, ready.

  ‘Lena!’ she called, her voice high and panicked.

  ‘Over here.’ Lena’s voice sounded strange – unsure of herself.

  She flew around the corner of an aisle, stopping short of where Lena was. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  Lena gave her an apologetic smile. ‘I’m fine. This rat not so much.’ She motioned with her baton towards the prone figure of a lifeless rodent.

  ‘You killed it?’ Loxton asked.

  ‘No, innocent.’ She grimaced, placing her hand on her heart. ‘I reckon they must put poison down.’

  ‘And the shout?’ Loxton raised her eyebrows at Lena.

  ‘That was me.’ Lena shuddered as she studied the dead rat. ‘Sorry. I hate those things.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Loxton regarded the animal on the floor. ‘This warehouse is clear. Let’s try the other ones.’

  It took over an hour to check them all and Loxton was cold afterwards, the chill getting inside her bones. The security man saw them off the premises but stopped Loxton just before she walked away.

  ‘Have you thought about the sewers?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure what you’re looking for, drugs or whatever it is, but if I wanted to hide something around here that’s where I’d go. They’re behind this industrial site. That’s why the warehouses got built here in the first place. No one would want the whiff of the sewers in the summer, so they couldn’t build houses here.’

  ‘Do you know if there’s an access point nearby?’ Loxton asked. She thought of Kowalski volunteering to take on the coordination of the search of the sewers. Now that she thought about it, Kowalski hadn’t mentioned how the search was going recently. Had he even got the POLSA searching or was it all a lie.

  ‘Follow the perimeter fence,’ he pointed out the direction. ‘You’ll turn a corner and then you’ll see it. There’s a manhole around there somewhere with a ladder leading down into them. They did some work on the sewers a couple of summers ago, the smell was dreadful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Loxton said, and they followed the fence round.

  ‘Great,’ Lena said. ‘More rats.’

  ‘Maybe the rats can’t bear it either,’ Loxton said.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Lena said. ‘I still can’t see Kowalski operating so close to where he abandoned his car. It’s a complete giveaway.’

  ‘I agree, but it feels like someone’s trying to frame him and they’re showing us exactly where to go.’

  ‘So should we go?’ Lena asked. ‘Is it a trap?’

  ‘All I know is that Jane might be down there. We’ve got to try to find her.’

  There was an overground railway line and under one of the arches a large manhole big enough for a person to fit through.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Lena said.

  ‘I reckon I can use my baton to get it open,’ Loxton said, crouching down.

  She got to work, grunting with the effort, sweat forming on her lower back as she braced against the metal. Lena pulled out her baton and joined her. Eventually it moved an inch, but with further work it started to turn more easily. They took a handle each and heaved the lid backwards.

  Loxton felt drained, her arms shaking from the effort, and she caught her breath for a moment. Lena stepped forward and peered down the hole.

  ‘Ja pierdole¸!’ Lena shook her head.

  Loxton moved over and saw a ladder leading downwards into oblivion. ‘How far does it go?’ Her voice sounded quiet, as if it was being swallowed by the vastness of the space beneath them.

  ‘No idea, but I bet there are loads of fucking rats down there.’ Lena shook her head. ‘I’m not keen on this one. There’s no way anyone went down there with a body. This feels like a dead end and a whole waste of time. We should get going to the safe house.’

  Loxton crouched down next to the hole. ‘The rope marks on the
bodies suggested they were bound. This would explain it. Whoever the killer is used ropes to lower them down there. You can see someone has opened it recently; these groove marks are new.’

  ‘We could ring Thames Water. See if they’ve been doing work here?’

  Loxton felt something pulling her towards the ladder. ‘I don’t mind heights,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and take a look. It won’t take ten minutes and we’re here now.’

  ‘I really don’t like this, Alana,’ Lena said. ‘It doesn’t look very safe.’ She peered down the hole as if expecting something to leap out at them.

  ‘Trust me, I’m a climber.’ Loxton smiled at Lena and sat down next to the hole, taking hold of the first rung with both hands, and then letting her leg dangle until it found a lower step. She swung her body out into the open space, using her hands to hold onto the rung, and her weight landed on the foot balanced on the ladder. Her other foot found purchase and she began the long climb down.

  She could hear Lena grumbling above her. ‘Rats and heights, what’s next?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be long. Call it in to Control. And give Winter a call on your radio. He needs to get POLSA down here.’

  ‘Doing it now,’ Lena said, and she turned her radio up, the chatter of the operator now far above Loxton.

  It grew colder as Loxton climbed down the ladder and she paused to look up towards the circle of light above her. When she looked down, she couldn’t see the bottom and wondered how far it went. She paused for a second, hooking her strong arm around a rung, and then fished out her torch from her pocket with her left hand. She clicked it on and pointed downwards. The metal ladder seemed to go on forever, disappearing into the darkness.

  She’d read about the London sewers. They could be as deep as fifteen metres, roughly the height of two houses. She’d scaled taller climbing walls, although she’d had ropes. She turned the torch off and pocketed it again.

  ‘How’s it look down there?’ Lena called.

  ‘I can’t see anything. It goes down too far. I’m just going to climb to the bottom, okay?’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Lena said. ‘I’m not letting you go down there on your own.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ she called up to Lena, but it was too late. She saw the circle of light obscured and suddenly she was plunged into darkness. For a horrible moment she imagined that Lena had closed the manhole up, leaving her stranded below the cold earth, but then she saw Lena’s slim silhouette eclipsing the circle of light.

  ‘We’d better not get stuck in here,’ Loxton said.

  ‘I told control; they’re sending POLSA units with ropes in case we find anything. And I’ve left a note on the manhole.’

  Somehow the note didn’t reassure Loxton. ‘Take your time,’ she said. ‘There’s no rush.’

  ‘I intend to,’ Lena said. ‘And don’t bother saying “Don’t look down”; I can’t see a thing anyway.’

  Loxton smiled despite the surroundings and the stench that was getting stronger with every rung she climbed.

  Chapter 45

  Saturday 5 February, 12:35

  Loxton paused to shine her torch downwards and saw the light glimmering back at her from far below. Water. But how much? She was too high to tell if it was moving, so she clicked the torch off and made her way further down.

  ‘We’re nearly at the bottom,’ she called up to Lena.

  ‘Thank God,’ Lena replied, her voice tense, and Loxton knew she was pushing herself to keep up.

  Loxton strained her ears in the darkness and could hear the drip, drip, drip of water but nothing else. She estimated thirty more rungs, so when she got to twenty-five, she stopped. The torch illuminated the water below her. It was still. She couldn’t tell how deep it was, so she pulled out her baton and extended it.

  She climbed the last five rungs and then lowered her baton into the water. It hit something hard. She tested the area below her. The water was only an inch or two high. The smell wasn’t as bad as she’d expected – more like stagnant pond water than anything else, and she was surprised. She put one foot slowly onto the floor and then the other, glad she was wearing her ankle boots and that it was winter.

  ‘It’s fine.’ She looked up and saw Lena steadily making progress above her. She moved away from the ladder, swinging her torch left and right. The tunnel was wider than she’d expected, big enough for a train to pass through.

  Would the killer have brought someone down here? It was a perfect area to destroy any forensic evidence. Water washed DNA and fingerprints away, even this small amount, and maybe at different times of the month the water was higher.

  Lena hesitated on the last rung. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘It’s just water. I wouldn’t drink it, but it’s fine to walk through.’

  Lena lowered herself down and carefully put her feet into the water. ‘Do you really think Kowalski would have been able to bring someone down here?’ She looked up towards the circle of light, impossibly high above them.

  ‘He’s strong enough. Or anyone would be able to lower a body down with ropes.’ Loxton imagined climbing ropes. If you knew how deep the drop was, it wouldn’t be too hard to do. In fact, the rope marks on the body made her sure that the sewers were the right place to look.

  Lena didn’t look convinced and she turned on her own torch. ‘We could split up. I go left, you go right?’

  Loxton pulled out her radio and turned up the volume. There was nothing. She couldn’t hear the main channel. The radio signal was non-existent. ‘We should stick together. Otherwise we’ll be completely on our own.’

  ‘Good point,’ Lena said.

  ‘Let’s go left,’ Loxton said.

  ‘Why left and not right?’ Lena asked.

  ‘Reynolds suggested the killer might favour their left hand from the way the victims were strangled. If that’s the case they would instinctively favour their left, so would be more likely to go that way,’ Loxton said.

  ‘Interesting theory.’ Lena said. ‘I’m ambidextrous; which way would I go? Do right-handed people always go right?’

  ‘It’s a fifty-fifty chance,’ Loxton said.

  They moved through the tunnel. Loxton scanned the water in front of her, sweeping her torch across the surface, not sure what she was looking for. It was impossible to know if anyone had been here recently or whether this place had been deserted for years.

  ‘There’s no way this water is going to get any higher?’ Lena asked. ‘I mean, it’s not linked into the Thames tide, is it?’

  Loxton shone her torch on the walls. They were dank and dripping, but the highest water mark was only knee high. ‘It doesn’t look like it gets too high. We’ll just go down here for a bit. Then try the other way. Really we’re going to need dogs to search this area.’

  ‘I doubt the dogs will be able to pick anything up through this stench.’ Lena wrinkled her nose. ‘I really don’t think this would be the place the killer would operate out of. And there’s no way Kowalski would leave his car so close.’

  ‘I don’t think it is Kowalski. I think he worked out where the killer was operating from and came here to look around. Then maybe he came across the killer and is still down here. Perhaps the killer didn’t know Kowalski had come here by car and that it’s parked so nearby. We can’t rule anything out.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Lena said, but in the torchlight she didn’t look convinced as she checked fearfully around her. ‘It doesn’t explain the knives in his boot though.’

  They moved in silence until Lena stopped still. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed her torch into the water.

  Loxton followed the beam and saw something glinting under the water’s surface. Silver. She scooped the object out of the water. It was a bracelet, the clasp broken, but she could make out decorative words on it. ‘Aaron and Joseph’.

  It was Jane’s bracelet.

  She turned towards Lena, but before she had a chance, something cracked into the side of her temple. The
force spun her sideways, her head swimming from the blow, and she lost her footing, landing heavily onto her hands and knees in the cold water.

  She tried to raise her head. Her vision swam and she felt sick. The pain came again, hard into the back of her skull and she fell forwards, her face crashing into the black water and drowning everything else out.

  PART 5 ALANA

  Chapter 46

  Saturday 5 February, 12:55

  Loxton blinked rapidly, but she couldn’t see anything. She seemed to have gone blind. She must be dreaming. It felt like she was in a cavernous space, with darkness all around her.

  She could hear the slow drip, drip, drip of falling water. It was cold in the cave, the air icy, shrinking her skin and making it tight across her face and hands. Her left side was wet, and she realized she was lying in water. She pushed herself upright using her left upper arm and leg, managing to find purchase, ending up in a sitting position.

  Her back and neck muscles screamed in protest as the blood sluggishly began moving through them again. The pins and needles were incredible, and her calf spasmed in pain.

  She couldn’t feel her hands and she could barely move them or her legs. She strained against an invisible force. She peered at her wrists but she couldn’t see anything. She could feel that they were bound in front of her, the bonds cutting deep into her flesh.

  She clenched and unclenched her hands into fists to try to get the blood moving through them. She scanned the area around her, but it was so dark, she couldn’t see anything.

  A bright white light flashed on, burning her eyes, so that she had to shut them tight.

  When she managed to open them again, all she could see was painfully bright light. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Her eyes began to adjust to the white light and she saw there was a figure behind the tripod, angling the light so that it captured Loxton completely.